Tourism

The Hon. P. CAICA (Colton) (15:03): My question is to the Minister for Tourism. How is the state government supporting the tourism industry to create more jobs in South Australia?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport, Minister for Racing) (15:03): I thank the member for Colton for his question and also for his letter a few weeks ago urging us to have the Santos Tour Down Under begin at Henley Square in 2018. We will chase that up. I think it would be a terrific thing.

The South Australian government has put an extra $70 million into the tourism sector because we know that when we spend money there, marketing South Australia around the nation and indeed around the world, we get more people coming here and spending money for our economy and creating more jobs. It is great to see that in the job figures out today there is a really good improvement in South Australia.

In the visitor economy in South Australia, we have taken our job numbers up by 4,000, so it is now up to 35,700 people employed in the tourism sector. That's an increase of 13.8 per cent. When we compare that with other states, we have the very best results in terms of improvement in the number of jobs in the visitor economy in our state. If we compare it to Queensland, for example, it has gone backwards up there by 4.8 per cent, so they have 4.8 per cent fewer people employed in the tourism sector than they did two years ago.

We have the best growth in tourism jobs anywhere in Australia, and we want to keep making sure that we double down on that. We have China Southern coming in here for the first time with direct flights from Guangzhou into Adelaide from 13 December. We have major events; some have been announced and more events will be announced in the near future. The Mundine versus Green fight on 3 February is going to be terrific. We will have 37,000 people down at Adelaide Oval for a fight night on a Friday night, hopefully a beautiful, balmy Friday night. I know that the health minister wants to get on the undercard, he wants to get in there, so if anybody wants to go in the ring with the Minister for Health and have a go, we can arrange that.

This weekend, we have the Formula One cars back in Adelaide, which is terrific. Stefan Johansson, Ivan Capelli and Pierluigi Martini are back here, and of course they all competed on the streets of Adelaide back in the 1980s. I want to thank Tim Possingham, who has put this Adelaide Motorsport Festival together. It is a terrific event. Last year, it pumped $3½ million dollars into the South Australian economy. Another thing we are doing is that we have given money to the South Australian Tourism Industry Council to help them train tourism operators around the state.

We have thousands of tourism operators right around South Australia, many of them individuals or couples who have put a lot of their own money into making sure that they provide the sort of accommodation, touring vehicles and things like that to give visitors to our state an outstanding experience. We have put money in to make sure that they can get the training to go to that next level. I want to congratulate all the winners in the recent South Australian Tourism Awards two Friday nights ago. It was terrific to have people like Trevor Wright from Wrightsair. He entered the competition for the first time and took out a gold.

People like Trevor, and they are all around the state, do a magnificent job giving people from around the world an incredible look at our wonderful state. The word 'unique' is often overused, but we are the only place in the world where you can go swimming in a cage with great white sharks year round. We are the only place in the world where you can go and see 560 million-year-old fossils. Trevor Wright is taking people out over the wonderful Lake Eyre and showing them the beautiful outback that is incomparable with anywhere else on earth. I thank all our tourism operators. As a government, we are there working side by side with you.